About shoeboxcinema

Shoebox Cinema is a small production based film and animation company based in Northamptonshire. The aim of the company is to teach Stop-Motion animation and film making in schools as well as providing low cost media support to those that do not have easily available media access.

Theres always something going on, team politics is great distraction from work and football is truelly the sport of the people.

But on the negative being involved with a loosing team is pretty depressing, especially in a town obsessed with Rugby! However all this used to pass me by…

Being never a real massive fan of football when I was a kid (I was rugby child, ie. fat), I never really bothered to learn the rules or engage in finding a favourite Premiership team that I could fight and die for. So when I got a job at the Cobblers Study Centre in Sixfields, I was pretty non plussed by the idea that I was now part of the football system.

However 3 years down the road, I’ve gravitated from not giving a toss about the stupid sport, to becoming the resident video editor of the beautiful game. Cutting the matches into the highlights and played sections, so that they can be easily analysed by the Manager and first team. Which I’ve now been doing for the past two Cobblers Managers.

Every Sunday and Wednesday, 5 hours of my day is completely dedicated to the matches of my local football team. Screaming and yelling at the highs and lows of the match, through Final Cut Pro.

So this is my day.

Luckily given my pretty quick editing speed, I manage to cut the games into seven sequences in pretty much real time, spending approximately 90 minutes editing the match, with a further 10 minute fine tune the seven edits after. A mind numbing job yes, but given the ammount of games I’ve now edited, its like working on autopilot.

Except of course when a rival team will ‘saboutage the disk’, by not recording the audio, filming in dodgy angles or putting hilarious fans next to the camera (which are hilarious)

Take a look at a short montage from one of the games I edited. A pretty standard game, but the Accrington Stanely Fan was making me laugh all day!

After returning from Asia a couple of months ago to find the Country had turned into a muddy snowball, I took the opportunity to go a play in the woods. Grabbing the dog, a stage gun and my very understanding girlfriend, we ventured out into the cold wilderness of Greens Norton Pocket park to shoot a completely un-planned and spontaneous short film. The idea which we planned on the way down was simple, ‘Girl stalked – something, big appears’.

Shooting for a little under an hour, including the nessercery ‘travel’ time and the obligitory interuption by mistified dog walkers and bemused farmers, we returned for tea and for me to start editing the film.

After looking over the footage and putting together a simple rough edit, I began work on the ‘after effects’. Now I could have gone two ways with the shots I had, either something tall and big like a troll or something fast and mechanical like a helicopter. I decided on helicopter as the troll idea sounded to cool to waste on a rubbish little short. Finding a good CGI model was pretty easy as was the texturing and rendering, which once completed was overlayed over the film. At this point I started on the Visual Effects in Motion, adding smoke, debris and gun effects to the film. This took little over a day to complete and after fine tuning the film a small bit with the new effects and adding around 20 layers of audio, it was finished.

QUICK – SIMPLE – DONE

Now obviously the final product was no where near my best work or what I could effectively do in the time I allowed myself, but as an example of what can be done a cold day off and with no real planning, I think its pretty cool.

HOSTILE

Last night at the Cobblers Advanced Animation Club, Lewis finished the second part in his Lego Star Wars epic. Adding the final effects and credits to a film that has been many months in the making. Starting the project initially last year as part of a Cobblers outreach program at Danetre School, Lewis continued production on his Star Wars film across the summer holidays and advanced animation evening sessions, animating and editing the short film to an exceptional level. As part of the production, Lewis has also become highly advanced with editing in Final Cut Pro, learning how to use the high end editing software after his film surpassed what iMovie was capable of. From storyboard to upload, Lewis has driven the creative and practical production of this amazing film, take a look below and tell us what you think.